| dc.description.abstract | Polycystic ovary syndrome is the most widely experienced hormonal condition in women, with effects and co-morbidities apparent in bodily processes such as reproduction, metabolism and physical appearance. The syndrome is also present in social life in dimensions of perception and self-perception, emotional responses, interactions with other people, and exchanges with medical systems. In this thesis I look at the areas of everyday life, health practices and bodily being that PCOS presents in through women’s subjective accounts of experience. I interviewed a diverse group of women who were in the same stage of life in that they were university students in their twenties. Each woman had different physical PCOS symptoms, varying their bodily experiences. The syndrome was present in an individual habitus for each woman, consisting of different cultural contexts, experiences with different medical systems, and personalized health practices to mediate with the condition. I trace various knowledge networks surrounding PCOS in everyday life at an individual level by using phenomenological understandings of experience. These knowledge networks contextualize how this chronic health condition is perceived and managed by women. The individual habitus of perceiving and managing PCOS is thus produced and lived through a synthesis of different knowledges generated by different modes of experiencing PCOS. The way the threads of different ways of knowing PCOS weave a habitus together are highly subjective, with women using bodily experience, knowledge, and preferences to make health choices in daily life. These health choices in practice revolve around medication, food choices, and adjusting or maintaining physical appearance. I make the case for agency, subjectivity, and individual narratives to be represented in how chronic illness and health management is studied and understood, especially in the case of a condition like PCOS that varies between individuals, is ill-understood, and affects a significant section of the female population. | en_GB |
